The Mackinac Incident

July 1, 2013
Phillipe Aziz, a psychopath from a profoundly wealthy Middle Eastern family, wants to commit a terrorist act on American soil to make himself a hero with the jihadist set. His plan is to blow up Michigan's Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day. For assistance, he's assembled a group of losers who all have personal reasons for hating America. Their plan is to hike through the thick woods of the Upper Peninsula to the target. They don't plan on stumbling over ex-con survival instructor Rod Eliot and his students. Confusion reigns, shots are fired, and Rod is the lone nonterrorist survivor. Rod begins tracking Aziz's crew, partly for revenge but also because ex-cons are always guilty until proven innocent. McDougall is a field guide himself and author of several outdoorsy titles. This is his first novel, and it hums with tension. The initial pages are slowed by character introductions, but once Aziz's crew and Eliot's outdoor survival class get tangled up, it's a backwoods race to a sobering and believable conclusion. Think Deliverance, toss in some terrorists, and make the backwoods guy the hero. Memorable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)